Marino visits from Queensland and a new microscope is built

Posted on June 1, 2024 by Yun Chen

We welcomed our collaborator Marino Lara from Prof. Warwick Bowen’s lab in University of Queensland visiting the MEOW lab for a month.

Marino helped us build a new microscope where we can study cellular states in a label-free manner.

We are very excited to use the microscope to test our cells.

The new scope is definitely a new hot spot in the lab that everyone wants to try it out.

We alreday got several promising results within the week.

We look forward to many good data in the coming weeks. Thank you Marino!

 

 

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Commencement 2024

Posted on May 22, 2024 by Yun Chen

This week we celebrated many milestones. Friends and family of the MEOW lab graduated and visited Homewood from far-away places.

Wei-Hung visited from Boston.

Sumayah came back and is ready to go on to her next journey in the medical school!

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Feiyu graduates

Posted on May 20, 2024 by Yun Chen

Today we celebrated Feiyu’s graduation as she was granted the MSE degree in Biomedical Engineering. Deiyu joined the MEOW lab as a rookie in biophysics and mechanobiology. She has made strides in research. Feiyu successfully authored a comprehensive dissertation and is preparing a manuscript about the mechanics in engineered tissue. Congratulations Feiyu (and happy birthday)! Job well done! We look forward to working with you when you come back from the summer break as our in-house biofabrication specialist!

 

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Samantha wins INBT symposium people’s choice poster award

Posted on May 16, 2024 by Yun Chen

We are very happy that Samantha’s work on quantum actuation under Junjie’s omnipresent supervision has won the people’s choice award at the annual Institute for NanoBioTechnology (INBT) symposium!

Samantha’s work attracted many people asking questions about her findings!

There is no better conclusion for Samantha’s productive work in the MEOW lab before she goes on to medical school. We are very very proud of you, Samantha!

 

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Embassy of France and Mycelium Visit

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Yun Chen

We met scientific attaches from Embassy of France today and the founder of the startup company Mycelium from France.

We demonstrated the tools that we use for research in biofabrication and biomaterials characterization for our guests of honor.

Daniel was showing how we could use shear-thinning viscoelastic biomaterials to print complex shapes using our bioprinter.

 

For example, we could print Gary the cat snail using NIVEA hand cream. Scale: 1 mm.

Or we could print a family of them.

We also learned a lot from the presentation by Mycelium and our colleagues at Hopkins. It was a very informative event.

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Congratulations Samantha for the medical admission offer!

Posted on March 30, 2024 by Yun Chen

We celebrated Samantha’s graduation last December and admission offer to medical school today!

Samantha joined our lab in 2021 when we just returned to the normal operation in the lab.  She has been working with Junjie through many projects. Samantha is an integral part of the MEOW lab. Though we are sad to part with her, we are very excited for Samantha that she is going to start a new chapter in life. Congratulations, Samantha!

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Day of Unibrows

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Yun Chen

On this bright and sunny Friday in March we all grew unibrows. Unibrows are the symbol of intelligence, wisdom, scientific rigor, research productivity, engineering excellence and ingenuity in many cultures since ancient times. This symbolism traces all the way back when human kinds started hypothesizing and verifying the hypotheses in their first experiments.

We are very happy that we can embody those scholarly characteristics on our faces!

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Dr. Alex Jones from National Physics Laboratory UK visits

Posted on February 16, 2024 by Yun Chen

We are pleased to learn about the research results at the cross section between cell biology and spin chemistry from Dr. Alex Jones‘ group. Dr. Jones leads his highly innovative research at the Biometry Division of National Physics Laboratory. Recently Dr. Jones coauthored the Nature paper reporting the minimal requirement for protein to be megnetosensitive. Dr. Jones gave a special seminar on February 16th 2024 at Johns Hopkins University. The talk attracted a good crowd of quantum biology aficionados at Homewood campus. Many questions were asked, and many new ideas were formed.

We are delighted that we had chance to learn from Dr. Jones and to exchange ideas over quantum biology in specific and general terms.  Dinner conversation was fun and stimulating too! Thank you for visiting us, Dr. Jones!

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Junjie chairs the Bioengineering Platform and gives a talk on quantum actuation at BPS Annual Meeting 2024

Posted on February 11, 2024 by Yun Chen

Junjie served as the chair of the Bioengineering Platform in Biophysical Society Annual Meeting at Philadelphia this year (2024). More coverage can found at this link.

Junjie also was invited to give a talk on his exciting discovery that we can use light and magnetism to control cell behaviors and cell fate. Junjie designed recombinant proteins that would respond to light and magnetic fields in a prescribed fashion.  The data suggest we can design many more that can modulate many more different types of cell behaviors.

We received a lot of interest at the BPS annual meeting and many insightful feedback. We look forward to getting back to the bench and make the recombinant protein more efficient and more powerful.

Very proud of you, Junjie!

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Daniel presents the discoveries from the quantum-limited light imaging project at BPS Annual Meeting 2024

Posted on February 11, 2024 by Yun Chen

We are happy to see the debut presentation of the results acquired from latest project launched last September. Using quantum-limited laser light, we were able to detect the organelle dynamics in cells in a label-free, non-destructive and longitudinal manner. Daniel presented our finding at a poster session in the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting in Philadelphia this year (2024)

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This is a collaborative project with Dr. Warwick Bowen’s group at University of Queensland. We are glad to see our efforts start to translate into fruition. Many thanks to BPS members who stopped by Daniel’s poster and gave helpful suggestions!

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